"Politics has replaced the gun and the bomb yet in many ways I feel that we live in a more segregated society than ever. We live apart, educate our children apart... while sport (the source of such unity in the world) remains sectarian, poisoned and divisive."

Irish News reporter Fergal Hallahan said, "Soon after I’d started working at the Irish News, I got talking to a northerner in her first year at a Trinity College Dublin who told me she had never knowingly met a Catholic until two months before." He added that this "sums up what a freak show the place is in certain ways."

Is it any wonder that young Protestants and Catholics then demonise the other and the unknown? No wonder we all do 'the dance.' The dog sniff: "Are they protestant or Catholic?" we all ask ourselves before saying, "What school did you go to?" As Jude said:

"You begin to wonder by looks, by how they look. Then you tell yourself to wise up, that’s ridiculous. The name usually gives it away."

"At thirteen or fourteen, in school, you’ll write ‘The Red Hand’ or ‘U.D.A.’ or ‘U.D.F.’ on your schoolbooks. The same in the Catholic areas, where you’ll begin to write ‘I.R.A.’ and ‘Brits Out’ on the walls."

"I couldn’t wait to start killing British soldiers. I was in Catholic schools, where we’d recite the names of the thirty-two counties of Ireland (counting the six of the North) as indoctrination. You got the impression in school that Cromwell was still roaming the streets doing evil things to the Irish, or something. When the riots started, the Catholics felt under attack, and so did the Protestants. A lot of recruiting went on. It would be a long time before I’d ever think that sending British soldiers home in coffins was not the whole answer."

"I am Protestant, went to Protestant schools, and, as I was growing up, there was nothing in the curriculum to suggest I lived in the North of Ireland. I was educated as a Brit. Sometimes I feel British, sometimes I feel Irish. That split is what I am."

"I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad."

Catholic educated Matt Johnston also made a powerful point about the zealotry his education on Twitter here, calling it "a segregation machine".

"The only way forward is total integration. Integration of the schools, and particularly the primary schools. I was at Jordanstown University and it was 90% Catholic, and growing up I never met a Protestant."

"Gideon (son of Ebenezer McNeice) was taught, as soon as he could speak, to say, “No Pope, no Priest, no Surrender, Hurrah!” That was the first stage in his education. The second was taken at a National school where he learned the multiplication table and the decimal system with unusual ease."

Conor Cruise O'Brien calls this kneetop narrative "a Twilight zone of time" when "our elders have talked their memories into our memories until we come to possess some sense of a continuity exceeding and traversing our own individual being."

"I don’t think we shall ever sort out the Northern Ireland issue for as long as we have faith schools in Northern Ireland."

The answer is what James Connolly said, to take education away from the clerics and into popular control:

"The democracy of Ireland, amongst the first of the steps necessary to the regeneration of Ireland, must address itself to the extension of its ownership and administration to the Schools of Erin. Whatever safeguards are necessary to ensure that the religious faith of the parents shall be respected in the children, will surely be adequately looked after by the representatives of a people to whom religion is a vital thing. Such safeguards are quite compatible with the establishment of popular control of schools."

THE NEW IRISHMAN

A blog promoting a broader view of Irish history and identity. A blog examining Irish unionism and presenting a pro-Union stance that is positive and progressive.

"Unionists need to understand their own history. They need to understand the causes and consequences of that history. They need to understand the nature of their relationship with Dublin, London, republicanism/nationalism and with each other. They need to understand and explain the idealism which underpins their beliefs and they need to begin to “imagine and forge a future illuminated by the unfulfilled promises of our past”."

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When Brian is not writing here he will be posting his thoughts and readings on Tumblr, his repository for interesting words and quote. If it falls quiet there, something will be happening on Brian's Twitter.